The Bells of San Juan Part 22

From that point he began to make excuses, first to himself and then to others. People were forgetting that only a short time ago the sheriff had lain many days at the point of death; that his system had been overtaxed; that not yet had his superb strength come back to him. Wait until once more he was physically fit.

It was merely an excuse, and at the outset no man knew it better than the banker himself. But as time went by without bringing results and tongues grew sharper and more insistent everywhere, Engle grew convinced that there was a grain of truth in his trumped-up argument.

He invited Norton to his home, had him to dinner, watched him keenly, and came to the conclusion that Norton was riding on his nerves, that he had not taken sufficient time to recuperate before getting his feet back into the official stirrups, that the strain of his duties was telling on him, that he needed a rest and a change or would go to pieces.

But Norton, the subject broached, merely shook his head.

"I'm all right, John," he said a little hurriedly and nervously. "I am run down at the heels a bit, I'll admit. But I can't stop to rest right now. One of these days I'll quit this job and go back to ranching. Until then . . . Well, let them talk. We can't stop them very well."

Suspicion of the Quigley mines robbery had turned at first toward del Rio. But he had established an alibi. So had Galloway. So had Antone and the Kid.

"There is nothing to do but wait," Norton insisted. "It won't be long now."

Engle, having less than no faith in Patten's ability, went to Virginia Page. She saw Norton often; what did she think? Was he on the verge of a collapse? Was he physically fit?

"All of this criticism hurts him," said the banker thoughtfully. "I know Rod and how he must take it, though he only shrugs. It's gall and wormwood to him. He's up against a hard proposition, as we all know; if he is half-sick, I wonder if the proposition isn't going to be too much for him? Can't you advise him, persuade him to knock off for a couple of weeks and clear out? Get into a city somewhere and forget his work. Why, it's the most pitiful thing in the world to see a man like him lose his grip."

"He is not quite himself," she admitted slowly. "He is more nervous, inclined to be short and irritable, than he used to be. You may be right; or it may be simply that his continued failure to stop these crimes is wearing him down. I'll be glad to watch him, to talk with him if he will listen to me."

But first she forced herself to what seemed a casual chat with Patten, finding him loitering upon the hotel veranda. She suggested to him that Norton was beginning to show the strain, that he looked haggard under it, and wondered if he had quite recovered from his recent illness?

Patten, after his pompous way, leaned back in his chair, his thumbs in his armholes, his manner that of a most high judge.

"He's as well as I am," he announced positively. "Thin, to be sure, just from being laid up those ten days. And from a lot of hard riding and worry. That's all."

Out of Patten's vest-pocket peeped a lead-pencil. Curiously enough, it carried her mind back to Patten's incompetence. For it suggested the fountain pen which of old occupied the pencil's place and which the sheriff had taken in his haste to secrete a bit of paper with Patten's scrawl upon it. She wondered again just what had been on that paper, and if it were meant to help Norton prove that Patten had no right to the M.D. after his name? The incident, all but forgotten, remained prominently in her mind, soon to a.s.sume a position of transcendent importance.

And then, one after the other, here and there throughout the county came fresh crimes which not only set men talking angrily but which drew the eyes of the State and then of the neighboring States upon this corner of the world. Newspapers in the cities commented variously, most of them sweepingly condemning the county's sheriff for a figurehead and a boy who should never have been given a man's place in the sun. New faces were seen in San Juan, in Las Estrellas, Las Palmas, Pozo, everywhere, and men said that the undesirable citizens of the whole Southwest were flocking here where they might reap with others of their ilk and go scot free. Naturally, the Casa Blanca became headquarters for a large percentage of the newcomers.

"The condition in and about San Juan," commented one of the most reputable and generally conservative of the attacking dailies, "has become acute, unprecedented for this time in our development. The community has become the asylum of the lawless. The authorities have shown themselves utterly unable to cope with the situation. A well-known figure of the desert town who long ago should have gone to the gallows is daily growing bolder, attaching to himself the wildest of the insurging element, and is commonly looked upon as a crime dictator. Unless there comes a stiffening in the moral fiber of the local officers, we dread to consider the logical outcome of these conditions."

And so forth from countless quarters. Galloway openly jeered at Norton. New faces, looking out from the Casa Blanca, grinned widely as the sheriff now and then rode past. Engle and Struve and Tom Cutter, anxious and beginning to be afraid of what lurked in the future, met at the hotel and sought to hit upon a solution of the problem.

"Norton has got something up his sleeve," growled the hotel keeper, "and he's as stubborn as a mule. He's after Galloway, and it begins to look as though he were forgetting that his job is to serve the county first and his own private quarrels next. I've jawed him up and down; it only makes him shake his head like a horse with flies after him."

The three, hoping that their combined arguments might have weight with Norton, went to him and did not leave him until they had made clear what their thoughts were, what the whole State was saying of him. And, as Struve had predicted, he shook his head.

"These later robberies haven't been Galloway's work," he told them positively. "They were pulled off by the same man who stuck up Kemble of the Quigley mines. Inside of a week I'll get something done; I'll promise you that. But let me do it my way."

Engle alone of the three drew a certain satisfaction from the interview.

"He has promised something definite," he told them. "Did you ever know him to do that and fail to keep his word? Maybe we're getting a little excited, boys."

The latest crime had been the robbery of the little bank at Packard Springs. The highwayman had gone in the night to the room of the cas.h.i.+er, forced him to dress, go to the bank, and open his safe. The result was a theft of a couple of thousand dollars, no trace left behind, and a growing feeling of insecurity throughout the county. It was for this crime that Norton meant and promised to make an arrest.

Exactly seven days from the day of his promise Norton rode into San Juan and asked for Tom Cutter. Struve, meeting him at the hotel door, looked at him sharply.

"Made that arrest yet, Norton?" he demanded. Norton smiled.

"No, I haven't," he admitted coolly. "But I've got a few minutes before my week's up, haven't I? Fix me up with something to eat and I'll have a talk with you and Tom while I attend to the inner man."

But over his meal, while Cutter and Struve watched him impatiently, he did little talking other than to ask carelessly where del Rio was.

"d.a.m.n it, man," cried Struve irritably. "You've hinted at him before now. If he's a crook, why don't you go grab him? He's in his room."

Norton swung about upon Struve, his eyes suddenly filled with fire.

"Look here, Struve," he retorted, "I've had about a bellyful of badgering. I'm running my job and it will be just as well for you to keep your hands off. As for why I don't make an arrest . . . Come on, Tom. You, too, Julius," his smile coming back. "I'm going to get del Rio."

"I don't believe . . ." began Struve.

"Seeing is believing," returned Norton lightly. "Come on."

Followed by the two men, Norton went direct to del Rio's room, at the front of the house, just across the hall from Virginia's office. At del Rio's quick "_Entra_," he threw open the door and went in. Del Rio, seated smoking a cigar, looked up with curious eyes which did not miss the two men following the sheriff.

"You are under arrest for the bank robbery at Packard Springs," said Norton crisply.

"_Que quiere usted decir_?" demanded the Mexican, to whom the English words were meaningless.

Norton threw back his vest, showing his star. And while he kept his eye upon del Rio he said quietly to Cutter:

"Look through his trunk and bags."

Del Rio, understanding quickly enough, sat smoking swiftly, his eyes narrowing as they clung steadily to Norton's. Cutter, a rising hope in his breast that at last his superior had made good, went to the trunk in the corner. Del Rio shrugged and remained silent.

Cutter began tumbling out upon the floor an a.s.sortment of clothing, evincing little respect for the Mexican's finery. Suddenly, when his hands had gone to the bottom, he sat back upon his heels, a leaping light in his eyes.

"Caught with the goods on, by G.o.d!" he cried. "Look here, Struve!"

He had whipped out a canvas bag which gave forth the c.h.i.n.k of gold.

Another came after it. And across each bag was stamped "Packard Springs Bank."

Del Rio's eyes had wandered a moment to Cutter and the evidence. Then they came back to Norton, filled with black malevolence. One did not need to understand the southern language to grasp the meaning of the words muttered under his breath.

Within the half-hour Strove, Cutter, and Engle had apologized to Norton; after this, they promised him to keep their hands off and their mouths shut.

That evening Virginia and Norton sat long together on Struve's veranda.

There was more silence than talk between them. Norton seemed abstracted; the girl was plainly constrained, anxious, and found it difficult to keep her mind upon the thin thread of conversation joining their occasional remarks. Abruptly, out of one of their wordless intervals, she said quickly:

"Congratulate me on being a rich woman! I got a check from an old, almost forgotten, patient to-day. A hundred dollars, all in one lump!

It's a fortune in San Juan, isn't it?"

Norton laughed with her.

"I feel like spending it all in a breath," she ran on. "I went right away to Mr. Engle and had him cash it so that I could see what five twenty-dollar gold pieces looked like. And I c.h.i.n.ked them and played with them like a child! Do you think I am growing greedy for gold in my old age? . . . You ought to see them piled up, though; five twenties. Isn't gold a pretty thing? I've a notion to go get them and show them to you; they're right on my table ..."

She broke off suddenly, her hand on his arm.

"Did you see some one out there at the corner of the house?" she asked quickly. "Do you think . . ."